This week’s Thursday we faced the first big choices during our project. We had to decide that which ideas we came up during last month, were good and usable enough to implement in an actual concept coin. When we started to go through our ideas I think we were first a little too critical against our thoughts. Almost none of the ideas seemed useful. However, after we discussed and considered our most promising ideas for a while, we came up six great features that we are going to try to attach in our concept coin:

1. OLED / LED – light. Lights would give shining and standout appearance to the coin and make it easier to differentiate the coins from others. Lights might also go around the coin's outer circle so that the coin could also be used to follow time.
2. Validation of the coin based on the wave length of lights.
3. Glowing materials. Those materials are UV-active so the coin would shine in the dark after exposed to daylight. The coin might also be used to follow the amounts of UV-radiation, so you would know when it's time to leave the beach without burning your skin.
4. Self-cleaning surface. Based on our survey coins are considered to be dirty. This coating would ensure the cleanliness of the coin and make it even antibacterial.
5. Material selections. Middle part of the coin needs to be transparent that there is some use of the lights. Outer layer will be some metal alloy.
6. Form of the coin. Our design specialist Ari got a great idea about the outlook of the coin. It would be circle or slightly oval with eccentric transparent centre. This would provide fresh look to the coin and also ensure more use to the coin than just for trading.

Now we have finally gone through our planning face and are starting to make our ideas concrete in the form of the concept coin. In the end of the day I can say that if we’ll be able to attach the features above to our coin, the outcome will definitely be great!

-Heikki

Group photo

Here is a group photo of our project team. Team members from left to right: Heikki, Ari, Antti, Simo, Jani, Marko, Mirva and Pedro.

Coin 2020 - Thinking About Your Coins

-Simo

Project news – Decisions and more technology research

Last week we had the brainstorming session with the project group. We gathered a lot of nice ideas and chose the top ten ideas for technology study. In today’s meeting we compiled the results of the investigations together. It was time to decide what ideas really are respectable in coins and what ideas are possible, at least, essentially. After careful consideration we decided to discard some ideas, like Braille dot writing (small target group and being outdated), screen and sound in coins (proved too difficult with today’s technology and in this schedule). We will continue developing ideas of new coin materials, surface treatment with uncommon characteristics, electronics in coin, customization features and new additional applications for coins. Next week, we will decide what exactly we are beginning to develop – what is our suggestion for the coin of 2020.

-Simo

Learning session - Expressing expertise

In today’s APD learning session we have nice subject. The aim was to learn about expressing own expertise. We used drawing as a learning method. Everyone drew own poster that illustrates their own expertise and other capabilities for project. After drawing everyone presented their own posters and oneself as an expert. Other group members added own comments and other noticed capabilities to the posters using post-its. Here you can view our posters. Images can be enlarged by clicking.

-Simo

Brainstorming session

Hello everybody!
After visiting the Mint of Finland we had a very interesting brainstorming session with the group. It's not too common in Otaniemi to use brainstorming as a learning method but our industrial designer Ari taught us well. We all had to bring 3 or more pictures that inspired us. Pictures were about tecnological innovations or about something we held dear to our hearts. During the brainstorming we circuled the pictures around the table and tried to find new wild ideas about the coin of 2020. I think our brainstorming went wery well. We gathered a huge amount of ideas and it was quite easy to continue developing them.
When you are innovating, it's important to remember to accept all ideas. It was very hard for me at least to not to think about financial restrictions and things like that. Even the silliest ideas are welcome. It's only after the brainstorming, when we start to investigate the possibilities to make a coin from the idea.
We gathered ten of the most interesting ideas together and agreed to find information about them before next thursday. I'm really looking foward on that. It will be exciting to hear what new technologies to make a coin this group will find!

-Mirva

Visit to the throne room: excursion to the Mint of Finland

Yesterday we got a chance to visit the Mint of Finland and actually
see how the coins we use everyday are being produced. The visit
started with a quick presentations by our hosts Tuomas and Henna. The
Mint of Finland is a nordic company which history goes all the way to
995 which is more than one thousand years behind - quite old, huh? In
Finland the production of coins started in 1860 when Alexander II gave
the finns their own money.

The visit itself was very educating and entertaining. It's really
surprising what the guys and girls at Mint can do! If you want a
special coin for yourself they can do everything from the scratch to
the final product and they will do it well. It will probably cost you
a lot, if they find room from the production line in the first place:
the Mint of Finland produced more than 1 billion coins last year so
you can imagine that they have their hands full of coins already.

The making of coins is all about precision. All the details and
markings need to be just right otherwise the coin has a good chance of
failing the quality checks. In circulation coins there can perhaps be
small dots or markings in them but, believe us when we say, the
collector coins are all carefully checked through. The people checking
those coins were so good on spotting possible faults that our
untrained eyes were totally unable to spot any mistakes in the coins
that failed the Q.C.

The security there was one thing that our eyes were able to catch
though. You wouldn't want to try to get in just by yourself and they
were quite strict on photographs also - that's why you won't be able
to see here all the details we were shown. During the visit we were
able to see some really secret stuff also but our mouths are totally
shut by the promise of secrecy, so no need for asking. All this makes
a perfect sense - after all they are making money over there!

Got interested in the coin making? Visit the Mint of Finland's web
page for more information on just about anything related to coins and
making of them. The link can be found on the sidebar at the right side
of this blog. Also feel free to comment to this post at anytime and by
doing so perhaps send some questions to the people at Mint as they
will be watching us closely ;)

-Jani

Hello:

I’m Pedro. I’m here in Finland like a exchange student and in my country, Spain, I’m studying Mining Engineering. Here in Finland I have to achieve 60 credits and I’m doing quite different courses (economics, mining, material science...).

I have choose the APD project because another Spanish guy did it in the Autumn and he recommend me it.

I started the course with a lot of hope and curiosity because I didn’t have a lot of information and it was an absolutely new kind of course to me(in Spain we just depend of the exam in most cases). After the first lecture I was a little scared because the topic of the project seemed to me very strange. However, after the group meeting when I analyze the project with the other guys I was happy again. The second week my feelings have continued being fine and the team seems very nice. This week we are going to go to “rahapaja” (I’m learning a little of Finnish) and we are going to define the Project more. I will keep you informed during the next week...

PEDRO